Lady's Children by Rhiannon Held

Author:Rhiannon Held
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Andrew Dare, Roanoke pack, archaeology survey excavation
Publisher: Rhiannon Held
Published: 2018-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

Contested History

We end with lost history found. This novella is set around ten months after DEATH-TOUCHED. Faith’s talents as an archaeologist are put to good use, and she pulls together the threads of Were we’ve met along the way: Pierce, Tom, Felicia, and others.

Chapter 1

Faith’s heart about stopped when the werewolf appeared up on a ridgeline. She and three others—two other archaeological field techs and the crew chief—had just finished doing shovel probes along a fairly flat, fallow field, but topography picked up out past an irrigation ditch, on someone else’s parcel. She was deeply familiar with wolves in silhouette, given how much she’d read and watched about them over the past ten months, which meant she was pretty sure she knew a werewolf when she saw one: heavier through the shoulders, bigger than a husky but smaller than a Newfie.

She’d spotted it while the crew was loading the company truck, one person up under the canopy to accept shovels and screens for stacking. Faith leaned hers against the tailgate and backed up toward the truck’s cab, wary. Cyrena, the crew chief, noticed her and shaded her eyes against the low afternoon sun to pick out the wolf herself. “Some farmer’s dog,” she guessed.

And damned if the werewolf didn’t start moving like a dog. The fact that it was an act was painfully clear to Faith, but the others seemed soothed by the way the canid bounded over the low, brushy weeds of the field, tongue hanging out and tail waving. So if it was someone coming for her, it clearly meant to lull the humans into a false sense of security so it could get close to her. But it had been ten months, with nothing. Why come after her now?

She could come up with no answer before the wolf was close enough for her to recognize that shade of gray, fading to white over the belly. More of a bluish gray, rather than the tan, sandy shade she’d seen on the majority of gray wolves she’d watched clips of. She knew this werewolf.

His name was Laurence.

She stepped forward without meaning to, and then he’d reached her. He threw himself at her feet and went into an ecstasy of canine writhing, belly ready for scritches. Faith noticed the rest of the crew relaxing subliminally, and wondered if Laurence had done that on purpose. Most big dogs, when they got this excited, started jumping to try to lick your face, but that was a lot more threatening from a strange dog with no owner in sight.

“He likes you,” Cyrena said, expression growing bemused. The others went back to packing the truck, but Cyrena leaned on the tailgate, watching, no doubt in case the friendly dog turned less so, and she had to intervene. She was tall and extremely lean, but that hid considerable strength. And she probably didn’t want to write up a safety incident report, either.

Faith crouched and manhandled Laurence upright, making a show of checking for a collar as she spoke.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.